The statements in this section merely provide background information related to the present disclosure and may not constitute prior art.
In a medical environment, technicians and medical personnel must prepare surgical instruments and various medical devices in anticipation of a medical procedure. In many hospitals and other medical environments, an inventory list of necessary equipment is generated from which a set of medical devices including surgical tools is assembled. Technicians typically must match the medical devices instruments against the written list when assembling instrument sets for sterilization after they are received from the washers. The process can be time-consuming and is prone to human error. In some cases, identifying marks and other identifying indicia can be difficult to discern.
In an operating room environment, prior to the start of the surgery, a circulating nurse and a surgical technologist must verify the correctness of the total number and accuracy of the instruments present by the nurse. A written list is used containing instruments that are entered into the instrument set. Comparison and verification is made by: a reading by the nurse to the technologist and verification with the technologist at the actual instrument. This process, especially when multiple sets and specialty instruments are necessary, can be particularly inefficient and susceptible to human-error. When additional instrumentation is required during the surgery, the circulating nurse must add these instruments to the written count.
Therefore, a need exists for a medical device tracking system and apparatus to track medical devices such as surgical tools and supplies in a medical environment such as an operating room.